Royal Media Services (RMS) earns its revenue from broadcast advertising. 

Citizen TV, Inooro TV, Ramogi TV, and 14 radio stations command that revenue because they reach mass audiences at scale, a position that let RMS set advertising rates for two decades. 

That position is now under pressure. Google and Meta is capturing a growing share of Kenya's advertising budgets by offering advertisers precise audience targeting, real-time performance data, and a lower cost per impression than a broadcast slot. Kenyan brands in fast-moving consumer goods, banking, and telecoms have moved portions of their annual media budgets toward these digital channels.

This shift has hit RMS where it has been most profitable. 

Advertisers pay the highest premiums for Kenyans between 18 and 35, and that is the audience leaving scheduled broadcast television fastest. Smartphone penetration crossed 50 percent of Kenya's adult population by 2023. YouTube, TikTok, and streaming services including Netflix now compete for the hours that audience once spent in front of Citizen TV. Citizen TV's national ratings remain strong, but older and rural viewers carry that strength, and advertisers pay lower rates to reach them.

RMS extended Citizen TV onto YouTube, where the channel has over 6.7 million subscribers. But YouTube's revenue-sharing model returns a fraction of what a comparable broadcast audience generates for the station. 

Citizen Digital carries the same content online, but ad blockers and competition from other news sites limit how much direct revenue that platform collects.

Regulation has added a second front. The Communications Authority of Kenya keeps issuing new FM licenses, so more stations compete for the same fixed pool of listeners in Kikuyu, Luhya, Kamba, and other language markets. Each new license dilutes the audience share RMS held in those markets. Advertisers targeting these communities now have more stations to choose from, and that competition has reduced the pricing power RMS once held as the dominant voice in several of those segments.

RMS built its station network between 1999 and 2015 against two structural advantages: limited distribution and limited competition. Digital platforms removed the first, by carrying content past any broadcast license boundary. New FM licenses removed the second, by letting competitors into language markets RMS once held alone.

The Succession Question

RMS, the most valuable asset in Macharia's businesses, sits outside any succession plan discussed in public. None of Macharia's remaining children have been positioned for a leadership role inside the company. Wachira Waruru, Group Managing Director since 2007, runs day-to-day operations and is technically capable of doing so. But editorial independence, political positioning, and strategic direction at RMS have answered to Macharia alone since the company's founding.

RMS has no comparable plan in place for the asset that produces the family's primary income, at the same time that income depends on a transition the company has not yet started: from broadcast advertising to a digital model that pays less for the same audience.

This story first appeared on episode one of Kenyan Founders, The History and Business Strategy of Royal Media Services